Total Nerd 12 Super Common Movie Deaths That Are Scientifically Impossible

List Rules Vote up the deaths you're relieved to learn aren't likely to be how you bite the dust.

Death is pretty much the only certainty any of us have in life and the movie depictions of death are usually poignant or spectacular. However, they are also often just flat out inaccurate. Rather than go with realistic methods of death, many films contain unbelievable movie death scenes that viewers accept as possible because they have been shown so many times. These movie death myths have become tropes that are used throughout the industry but that no one questions. Like unbelievable dialogue, it all boils down to some bad and rather misinformed writing.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any end in sight for unbelievable ways characters die in the movies. The ways characters die in movies that are fake - be it scientifically or just logically - will probably only increase in bizarreness. But here, at least, you will find the truth of these death deceptions. Whether you truly believe liquid nitrogen will turn you into glass for the shattering or that a person could actually be cut straight in two with a razor-sharp string, its time to sort out the rational fears from the straight ludicrous ones. Thanks to a few experts who know real science from fake science, here's a dose of reality about those movie deaths that may have looked cool but were just straight up #fakenews.

1 4,523 VOTES

Having All Your Flesh Eaten By Piranhas

Piranhas might be the most feared fish outside of sharks in all of the Earth’s oceans and rivers. They have developed an incredible reputation over the past 100 or so years, and the widespread belief that they can strip anything in their path to the bone appears in movies all the time. Just like most other fish, though, piranha will flee if a bigger creature comes near them and this includes humans. They tend to only attack things that are smaller than them or are already dying, with the carnivorous fish being far less aggressive than the film industry has made them out to be.

Getting Sliced By Sharp Wire

Most people will be familiar with the old movie trick of stringing up some wire across a road and tying it between two trees. The intended victim will then speed along in their car and either be decapitated or have another body part sliced off by the high tension of the wire. Industrial strength wires can cause horrible injuries and even death if they snap and hit someone but any wire thin enough to be used effectively as a razor would not be strong enough to survive the impact. Instead, the wire would just snap when the person hit it.

Getting Sucked Into Quicksand

Sinking in quicksand has become such a popular way for characters to die in movies that researchers have devoted plenty of time to studying its effects. According to films, anyone caught in quicksand is likely to die as they are slowly sucked into the sand as they struggle to escape. Although anyone falling into quicksand will sink initially, the density of the sand and water mixture will then cause the unfortunate victim to float. Eventually, the water will settle back down and cause anything with a similar density to a human to slowly make its way back to the surface.

Getting stuck, not sucked, in quicksand is much more likely and may lead to death by starvation... or boredom.

Being Quickly Strangled To Death

Hollywood has long portrayed manual strangulation - someone choking another person to death with their hands - as a quick and easy method to kill a person. Throttling a person is much more difficult than movies make out in real life. It is definitely not quick and can take up to five minutes for a person to die as cutting off all the air and blood going to the brain is tough. Meanwhile, a person being choked is likely to struggle violently as they panic and begin to lose consciousness and they can almost fully recover in just a few seconds if they are able to break free.